The Salzburg Tales

by Christina Stead

  I began to feel uncomfortable in the presence of her poor little craze. Nothing is more disagreeable to me than to see a friend or an intimate become obsessed as if they had a tic, and cherish what is quite indifferent to another. It was to get rid of my discomfort that I threw away nest, eggs, mirror and all. Then I felt an affection for Liesl. I tried to tame the little creature and make her fly about the verandah: when I thought she was tame, she escaped, flew a few flutters in the garden, and suddenly spreading her inexperienced wings, sped out over the housetops, trees and even over the top of the hill, in a moment, like an arrow.

  She did not know how to get her living: she probably died of hunger, or was pecked to death by the sparrows, who are suspicious of foreigners. During the whole time I laughed with a good deal of malice at the poor little simpleton, and at the same time, I remembered Liesl as if she had been with me for years: she caused, at the time, a curious pain in my heart, the sparrow so pathetically deceived in love.

  IN the afternoon the weather cleared and some of the visitors found themselves on the terrace of Hohen-Salzburg overlooking the green hills, the city, the river, the fertile plains in the shadow of the Untersberg: the rain-clouds like Euripidean women drew their skirts together, mounted the stage and went off worn and broken, but with splendours and tempests in their bosoms still. The sun poured down over the mountain, the red walls of the Tannengebirge appeared, the crickets began to sing. Someone said in a musical voice,

  “This has existed before in the first visions of our young imaginations. When I was a child I had a book with this title, ‘The Land of Enchantment: or, Banished beyond the Clouds.’ The story was dull but the title held me spellbound for months. But I never expected to see my vision clothed with earth, trees, rocks, stones, the sound of water and footsteps, and with the war-worn stones that hang before us.”

  Heads turned in all directions and they perceived that the Foreign Correspondent was speaking. They were all silent, as if he had broken through the restraints proper to society. Then the Master of the Day invited him to speak again, about his early days, the romantic youth he had passed through; and with scarcely an acknowledgment, still musing, the Foreign Correspondent told this tale.

  The Foreign Correspondent’s Tale

  THE DIVINE AVENGER

  VENGEANCE is a joy divine, says the Arab: this I heard on many a winter afternoon one year, from my dear friend Raphael, who was a student of mathematics, bursar in the college I attended. I waited for Raphael each afternoon, after school, to walk an hour or so along the terraces, through the park, thronged with schoolchildren whose winter faces had a frosty bloom, beyond the ponds, sullen and thick with fine soot, to my house, to linger at the gate, tasting the savoury end of argument, or passionately trembling to recollect the early talents of great men. Then he would speak with hesitation, of a new theorem he had dreamed of in his sleepless nights, or the new social equation we both discussed with ardour. At the end he would cry out for vengeance against the glorious and powerful, necessary oppressors since the world began. Yet he often forgot our appointment, unable to resist the temptation to shine suddenly among the boys of his class after a lecture, displaying his rhetoric. Often I crossed him, if I went home slowly, alone, as he went with a crowd of boys in waterproofs, crowing like a young cock along the streets, or silent, meditating some chance for repartee.

  One afternoon in early spring I sat near a window in the library and heard Raphael speak suddenly to someone outside, about me, angry because I was rich and he poor, and I was able sometimes to help him out. He ended: “Our prince need not think that dazzled by that, or his republicanism, I forget that he is a snob and a foreigner!” I heard the sound of his high clear voice diminishing as he crossed the lawn. I was paralysed with pure desolation: even in that country, a free republic, it is hard for a person of my race to make a true friend.

  The lamps were now turned on at a few desks, while the round lovely trees of the college garden swarmed like insects in the dying light; the windows, bright ogival daggers, lengthened in the dusk. There was no central light in the room: above only shone the little jewels of coloured windows fitted high into the Gothic arch. Who shall say? Pride, passion and vengeance are still considered in my family, noble passions. My life had been quiet. Bullion merchants, goldsmiths, manufacturers of velvets, bankers are the friends of my uncle; I have known nothing of the unhappy but their footsteps softly scuttling behind a distant curtain. Therefore, till then I had had humane ideas. At his words, a slow and cruel resentment began in me. I looked steadily at the book before me, without reading the words, till suddenly some of them sprang up into my eyes with such a radiance that I felt I had been lighted within. The light spread until it seemed that I sat within the pavilion of a great diamond, and thousands of tales flew in a cloud about me; in all of these a wounded heart had pursued and overcome its offender. Then I saw, on the reverse side, thousands of oppressed creatures, winding their ways through the labyrinths of drama, to punish the unconscious offender and right a wrong justice never would. I imagined myself that personage that had figured so often in our daydreams, an absolute king, a philosopher demi-god.

  Clouds assembled, curdled, rose and began to disperse again, and light dawned on a strange scene. In the foreground, domestic cattle stood on the sandpits of a mountain river and moved about in the shade of tree-clumps. The fields, full of flats and hollows, rolled like waves in the morning light, and men in the dress of villagers and of townsmen passed through them. Within a circle of trees, a country belfry stood, and at its side a fortified, aged wall with watch-towers. Beyond this, the ground swelled quickly and richly in knolls around which wound roads and herdsmen’s tracks; and presently arose twin towers like trumpets, with conical roofs, pear-shaped turrets and the triple walls of a rich city, within which, again, marching higher and entered by a noble arch in the Norman style, rose a powerful citadel, commanding the congregated hillocks, and looking down into the nearest valleys. Beyond this city were hills covered with farms and bearing towers on naked slopes, as in the ancient Etruscan towns; and still farther off, rising high into the sky, was a bold range of hills, melancholy blue, with unweathered peaks blazing with light and bitter ravines full of snow. In that nearer castle I seemed to live and to look out over my dominions, as one looks at an absorbing picture and dwells on each detail: that picture was mine, and I lord of that world.

  The first morning I set out from the castle airily and descended the byways of the lower town, where I was immured by ancient walls, covered with lichens and torn notices, where tottering gates opened on courtyards in which thousands of small businesses were carried on. There were strong smells everywhere; and old, ugly, deformed and menacing persons, and children with sharp voices, and loafing workmen, passed by over the stones, or stood around the bars. A volant spirit momentarily filled and deserted these thin beings, leaving them without energy amongst refuse from street markets, waste water, old clothes drying, hammers ringing and wheels clattering and spattering, independent of human guidance. I had only to command these signs of degradation to disappear, for them to do so. I felt a perverse lassitude. The streets became more complex; then I saw walls taller and blacker, sightless windows more numerous, tattering rags thicker, cabbage stalks slimier; and old women with brooms more frequently appeared in the hallways of misery. Doorways appeared thick and fast in the indigent architectures of the slums; lamps and fretted iron signs stood out from damp signboards; sudden rounds of light shone flatly on the filthy surfaces of rare windows. Every window broken, stuffed with rags, straw and paper, or pasted with sticking-plaster attracted my eye. My nose followed pungent stinks, and I, by the aspects of streets and courts, was impelled into certain ways. Arms reached down from the lamps and signs and window-sills to push me round corners; old hitching-posts and foot-scrapers tripped me. The day shone clearer and greener: no air from the castle walls or the hills blew there. On the windows of saloons heads were drawn in the fat dirt, of thieves, pu
gilists and street girls.

  Then I thought, this cheap dirty lad, that passes on his way to collect the takings of one of his girls, is an oppressor; all oppressed are oppressors, like the servant who passes on his master’s discontent to his inferior. Shall I slay each oppressor as he shows his hand, or each man as cruelty rears its head in his breast, or only those masters of human destiny who begin the business, or those that are too poor-spirited to resent and resist tyranny? Shall I simply remove all evil, disembodied from these fleshes, to another planet, and leave these innocents to struggle on their way? Or shall I remove these men from their present conditions, and in another planet let them reconstruct their life? All this was far from new: in fact, a very copy of the ways of God the Ancient Adversary in the western scriptures. But I could take my ease, watchful, not sleepy, enjoying the innocence and rosy fancies of the liberated race, to whom I would never show my power, for fear I should set the bad example and reinstate the race of monarchs, not interfering any more, except to nip anarchy, that individual monarchy, in the bud, and shy the acquisitive and tyrannical out into space, to fill the earless void with cries. This was not novel either. Yet I did it.

  I cast the owners, the lords, treasurers, counsellors, courtesans, judges, generals, moneylenders, bishops, party-leaders and householders, mortgagers, and folks with long wills, in their nightgowns to Saturn, the best to Saturn, the lesser to his moons, while began in my country the first Saturnian reign. The sun, rain, hail and snow fell as before, winter froze and summer burned, the trees shed their leaves and lambs sprung, clouds covered the earth and winds blew on the mountains and valleys; the orphan, the deserted lover, sickness and death remained the same, some strove and some were quiescent in affairs, in arts, in love, some had better digestions, and some better complexions, some better ears, and some longer fingers: I had to transport a very large number of these to Saturn, in their turn, and it seemed to me that the strains on earth were becoming more complacent, duller, and that indifference had taken the place of the vices, to the disadvantage of men. Pastoral divisions of time and pastoral manners came into vogue, speech thickened and the land was full of trouble, for the brighter spirits reading continually in the libraries of the brilliance of the older world, desired it, and, renouncing the world, and me, whom they discovered in conjecture, set out resolutely on the old path to perdition. I destroyed their libraries and machines: I had no need to take them, too, to Saturn, for they had long ago been reproduced there by that damned race of transplanted polyhistors.

  In a short time I was obliged to retire to Saturn, to live in a little comfort while considering my next step. I could either alter the physical aspects of the world, its inhabitants, its physics or their souls. Finding no response in my mind to the question thus posed, I mournfully permitted my divine passion to percolate through the terrestrial races, so that, like the seed of Cadmon, each slew the other to avenge mutual injury, thus all were extinguished.

  And having for some time contemplated the luxuriant greensward and the budding forests with a vague eye, then, in reply to an unexpressed wish which had formed in my breast, I suddenly perceived, standing erect among the flowers, under the shade of a splendid mountain, such as that one yonder, dressed in blue cloth, and holding in his hand a curved dagger, a youth.

  That youth turning towards me, I saw to be Raphael, and Raphael, beginning to laugh, showed me the knife and then plunged it in his breast, and at the same moment fell to the ground and lay still, while the landscape wilted around him.

  At this moment I awoke suddenly, in the library, saw that night had come, and went out into the corridors. A few distant footfalls echoed in the cloisters, as I passed along them. I came to the great door which leads into the quadrangle, and there stood Raphael as if waiting for me. I looked at him silently, but fearfully absorbed by my dreams, and still unforgiving, I passed him by quietly and went home. Soon after I arrived, I heard the bell ring, and a servant brought Raphael up to my study. He looked at me earnestly for a moment, and then I heard a ringing crash on the table. I looked there and saw sliding across it his knife, a Turkish knife finely hammered, with an ivory handle, on whose blade he had, that winter, engraved Vengeance is a joy divine, his saying from the Arab.

  I placed my hand on my heart, which beat hard.

  He said: “I meant to insult you this afternoon. Why, I can hardly say, unless it is to feed my heart, starved of any affection but an alien’s, on a causeless vengeance. Now you must hate me, Daimio, there’s a knife, and there’s my hand.” Saying this, he slapped me on the cheek.

  In that country, of course, the duel is not extinct. I hate the practice, and loathe the stupidity of the deliberate provocation, but I was unable to avoid a duel. The next day, early in the morning, he arrived at the place chosen, pale and weary, and as if empty of life.

  “You shall be revenged, Daimio,” he said to me; “your blood must be sweet with it after generations; you shall enjoy a joy divine.” I must explain that Daimio is not my name, nor were my people ever Daimios: they are only merchants.

  We took our stand, but he quickly dropped his guard, drew a small tube from his pocket, pulled out the cork with his teeth, and drank the contents, which looked like water. He stood a moment and then, saying a word I could not understand, fell at my feet. In the bottle was diluted cyanide of potassium.

  When I reached home I found a letter come by hand from Raphael, a long letter of twenty-six pages, in which he explained all the ideas he had germinated but not brought to flower, in his mathematical studies, which he confided to my care, and desired me to give to his master, or to publish, as I would. At the end he said: “I am the victim of excessive vanity and pride. It is a disease which will ruin my talents, in any case, and giving these few speculations into your friendly care, I prefer death to the mortifications of daily life.”

  This was the end of a pride not human, and the beginning of his tender reputation which you shall see grow in the shade.

  THE sun poured down over the castle of emerald and hornstone: light sounds blew overhead, and thick clouds rose and hung over the distant mountains. Three young, fair-haired, capuchin monks passed along a lower path while the band in the café in the market-place down below played the “Pilgrims’ Chorus” from Tannhaüser.

  They sat still, watching evening approach. The Viennese Conductor then looked at the red sunlight burning on the Doctress’s russet hair, and on her white skin, and said to her with a smile:

  “Will you speak now, dear lady? Some wild legend from your native country, some incident from the history of that gallant and intelligent people.”

  “O, I can’t bear those Scottish girls with their moppings and mowings, those Lucias, those hielan’ lassies,” cried the Doctress, fluttered and flushing; “and I have no time for romance: that is my blind spot. Besides, one gets tired of it: people are so romantic in a clinic, but a plate of soup, the removal of the tonsils, or a good day of sunlight, has a curious way of dissipating all these mental fogs and showers of rain. A doctor can’t be mystic. Besides, I have always been very matter-of-fact: it’s my fault, I admit it. And you wouldn’t like to hear a case history, I suppose!”

  “Why not?” said the Master, smoothly. “Tell us one of your clinical romances.”

  The Doctress looked sharply round the group, knotted her brows and after a moment of silence, began to speak in a dry voice. But she presently forgot her embarrassment, as the dusk gathered slowly over the wide landscape and began to soften the faces of her audience.

  The Doctress’s Tale

  THE TRISKELION

  ARNOLD, the blind youth, waited patiently in the Matron’s office. From time to time both hands played over the table as if he were reading Braille. The Matron’s pen went scratch, scratch, writing in a register. Through the open window came sounds of voices and steps on the gravel drive, but neither moved. Then the sounds were heard in the paved hall, and in a moment the hall attendant opened the door and said: “Matron, Mrs Je
ffries, and Mr and Mrs Skelton, come for Arnold.” Arnold went directly to the visitors, saying: “Good morning, grandmother; good morning, Aunt Sylvia and Mr Skelton.”

  He sniffed and said with his thick articulation: “You have got a nice scent today, Aunt Sylvia.”

  “It is only lavender,” said the young woman indifferently.

  “Smell mine,” said the grandmother, drawing a coquettish handkerchief from her bag and flicking its heavy perfume under the youth’s nose.

  “I can smell,” said Arnold, and sat down in his chair, fingering absently the pattern of the tablecloth, waiting till these creatures, supercilious because of their supernatural gift of sight, should think of him again and take him away.

  He had been born blind. He had been five years a pupil in the Royal Institute for the Blind and now, at nineteen, having slowly and painfully learned a trade, he hoped to free himself from the bonds natural to his condition. His family was rich, but he wanted to be a workman: in the rare moments when he spoke of himself, he said: “When I am a workman, I will do—so-and-so …” imagining a workman to be free, richly paid and respected.

  He listened. His grandmother was giving the Matron the address of the bootmaker to whom he was to be apprenticed, and with whom he would board. Mr Skelton said to his wife: “But I think the poor fellow should have a home: an orphan must feel lonely, and then to be always blind, alone in the dark … and never to have known his father and mother!” Arnold felt acutely, as the Matron saw dully, the singular look of animosity interchanged between the two women.